Back at Yankee Stadium, Mungo was worried about Ted. His aim was off, had never been worse.
Ted took “The Doublemint Man” to the ballpark and wrote there on his short breaks. You never knew when the right words would come, but they wouldn’t come if you didn’t write. He glanced up at the huge clock in right field and saw that it was “Longines” for the first time, that the name of the watch company was Longines. Ted laughed because he had always seen it as “Longingness,” and that it wasn’t the name of the company, but rather a comment on the passage of time itself, and yearning. The Longingness. But no, it’s just French. What I thought was a brilliant, sad yearning was just French.
He looked away from the Longingness to his boss standing back in the concourse, a stupid, angry look on his face.